iScream, uScream, we-all-Scream for iPhone

What really struck me about the line outside Palo Alto’s Apple store on University Avenue today wasn’t how long it was. It wasn’t, in fact, long – only a handful of people waited to become proud owners of the new iPhone 3G.



Rather, the surprise came from how everyone expected the line to be long – and saw potential in the predicted media attention.



Anticipating that fans stretching around the block as in times past would cause reporters and cameras to circle like flies, businesses used the Apple iPhone release as free advertising.



The few people waiting – including a die-hard Mac user since 1984 and two teens who’d earlier been “banned for life” from Apple for downloading third-party apps onto an in-store phone – reaped the benefits.



According to the teens, Danny Fukuba and Eric Vicenti, a truck pulled up and plied them with Smartwater, the designer H2O. Product-design firm MindTribe handed out free t-shirts.
Design firm Speck – like MindTribe, based nearby in downtown Palo Alto – gave out a bright blue iPhone case, a color they said was limited to only 300 worldwide, according to a third teen in line.



Well, those companies were right. The Weekly did send me out and I did interview line-sitters, few though they were. And here their products are, getting air time on my blog – and on our video.



Check out the video for a look at what happens when someone tries to come between an Apple-enthusiast and his iPhone.

Face-bloc blacklash & Valley joie de vivre

Maybe the backlash against Facebook will calm down now. Rumors are the cushy $600-a-month subsidy for employees who live within a mile of downtown offices has been cancelled.
So perhaps the blame heaped on the heaps of young Facebookers in downtown Palo Alto will let up.

The social-networking company’s presence has become ubiquitous in the last couple years. Up from its single office in 2004, the firm now rents five spaces and employs 600 people as of this spring -- and counting. Its logo-emblazoned track jackets, hooded sweaters, messenger bags and other collegiate apparel are sported by young people at every crosswalk.

All those people are pushing rents higher and crowding locals out of cafes, a summer 2007 Valleywag post groused. And as the company’s expansion continued unabated, so did the rumor mill, blaming Facebookers for exacerbating the already astronomical rent inflation of downtown.
I decided to write an article for the Palo Alto Weekly examining the Facebook influence on downtown. I found out commercial rents have indeed risen 20 to 25 percent in the last year, according to a local realtor. A residential realtor said subsidies such as Facebook’s are commonplace among tech firms, implying it’s not just the upstart firm inflating prices.
All those clothing logos actually help one employee spot her co-workers, who she otherwise wouldn’t recognize, the company is growing so fast. Read the whole article for more.
But if Facebook’s subsidy-cancellation causes employees to flee downtown, will University Avenue’s bustling vibe take a nosedive?

Currently, the company builds on an already-resurgent feel in downtown.
When I arrived at Stanford in 2002, directly after the tech blow-up, University Avenue seemed so cruelly named. Palo Alto was no college town. Sure, there were plenty of collared shirts eating lunch on the main drag and shoppers in the drugstores in the afternoon. But that was replaced by a weak trickle of pedestrians by the evening. We eyeballed each other curiously, like animals come to drink at a little-visited stream.

Of course, the whole area felt a bit deflated. Then, you could spot empty office parks from the freeway and see through their windows clear to the sky on the other side. It was a bit ghastly, and not just a little reminiscent of abandoned Gold-Rush era towns elsewhere in the West.

Fast forward six years.
It’s a scene from the film, “How Palo Alto got her groove back.” Despite some warning that the subprime crisis will – and has – already affected the area, there’s a genuine bounce-back feel. The restaurants are packed in downtown and several bars now charge cover, a formerly rare practice.

So will Facebook’s end-of-an-era crackdown on employee benefits put a damper on the hoo-rah feel? I don’t think so. Employees will likely continue to fill the street on work days and perhaps go out for drinks after work. (If they’re not busy playing beer pong in the office, that is.)
Since the firm provides free meals a-la Google, the eateries of Palo Alto will probably be minimally affected. Residentially, if some employees move away in search of cheaper pastures, other equally or more affluent renters will pop up to claim those checkbook-squeezing apartments. They will have an equal need for deodorant and coffee from downtown stores.

The bigger question is whether downtown will feel any different when the entire company moves. Rep Brandee Barker said Facebook rents rather than owns office space. And it has intentions to grow, grow, grow, according to reports on founder Mark Zuckerberg. If the company ever wants a campus, it’ll have to decamp to an office park elsewhere. Maybe it’ll make its new home in one of the last of the vacant complexes, still sitting empty out by the freeway…

But who will help the geeks?

Entrepreneurs, take note: your chances at success just hitched up a notch. Versatile businessman Saeed Amidi has opened another Plug and Play Tech Center for promising start-up companies in Palo Alto.

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Plug and Play centers are an alternative to traditional start-up incubators in venture capital firms, according to Amidi, the Plug and Play CEO. Instead of tying their fortunes to any one funder, young companies are housed in a sort of entrepreneurial ecosystem until they are ready to spread their wings -- and let the money come rolling in. Amidi is quick to point out that Google sparked a bidding war while housed at one of his properties years ago.

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The centers' model is to cluster start-ups in a sort of beehive of brilliance. As they draw on each others' energy and creativity, they are also given access to a formidable line-up of connections.

There are regularly scheduled visits from angel investors and venture capital firms such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson. There are monthly Web 2.0 events.

There are even semiannual expos, whereby a feeding frenzy of media and funders descend to hear an exhausting roster of business pitches. And Amidi’s own fund, Amidzad, may choose to kick in some dough for the best ideas.

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Lucky entrepreneurs, indeed.

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Amidi’s latest Plug and Play Center is on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto. It opened in early May. With space for about 15 companies to work side by side, it may not reach the fevered pitch of the Sunnyvale site, which has 129 start-ups, he said. But it’s got the nearby businesses of downtown, including Accel and Norwest Venture Partners, he said.

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To read more about the Plug and Play concept and hear Tim Draper's thoughts on it, check out the article I wrote for today’s Palo Alto Weekly.

Meanwhile, reporting on Plug and Play got me wondering – what about the geeks?

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To rent space in a Plug and Play center, start-ups must demonstrate their potential, according to to Shobeir Shobeiri, a Plug and Play business manager. Applicants are screened not only for the strength of their ideas but also for the quality of their team, he said. That could mean an upper hand for communicative folks skilled at the sort of networking Plug and Play arranges. It could mean an advantage for the Stanford computer-science-majors-turned-start-up-founders I’m working with for an article series now (more on that later). Far from the stereotype of shy computer nerd, they seem immensely aware of how to meet-and-greet and pitch ideas. Their handshakes are firmer than most adults'.

So are the introvert genius-geeks just left in the dust? In the era of the elevator pitch, what about the nerds mumbling at their shoes? Think of the cliché of nerdy, adolescent Bill Gates. Or any stereotype about engineers or programmers, for that matter. Are the terminally shy worker bees still starting companies, and if so, how much does charisma matter?

A lot, apparently. Just visit Stanford’s School of Engineering, home to many of its entrepreneur-grooming programs, and you’ll see fliers for overcoming fear of public speaking plastered in the halls. Social know-how is not quite the reigning jewel of innovation -- yet.

Or maybe it is. Maybe those fliers are targetted at the small, stuttering minority. Perhaps the brilliant introvert truly has gotten a bit more savvy about wooing venture capital, now that such practices are Valley mainstays.

The rise of the Cool Geek to replace the Awkward Nerd was recently chronicled in a New York Times Op-Ed piece by David Brooks. And in fact, he credited some of Silicon Valley’s biggest legends with the transition:

“The future historians of the nerd ascendancy will likely note that the great empowerment phase began in the 1980s with the rise of Microsoft and the digital economy. Nerds began making large amounts of money and acquired economic credibility, the seedbed of social prestige. The information revolution produced a parade of highly confident nerd moguls — Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and so on.”

The jury is out, however, on whether this transformation has happened to nerds or just alongside them. Does society like nerds more, or are they genuinely more likeable? If only someone could build a Facebook application capable of riddling me that.